If a teacher fails to turn up to class it's usually a cause for celebration for students as they dash off to enjoy a few precious hours of freedom. But what happens when it's the other way around and a teacher is left all alone with no pupils to impart their knowledge to? This is what happened to Florida-based professor Adam Heath Avitable who took to Twitter to share a story about when he got stood up by his students - and it is both hilarious and heartbreaking. He speculated that he'd accidentally locked the door so that nobody could get in, or even that there had been a zombie apocalypse. Adam Heath Avitable, from Florida, took to Twitter to live-tweet what happened when his students didn't turn up to class Adam Heath Avitable, who is a storyteller and comedian, according to his Twitter bio, took to the social media site to complain after nobody turned up to his class. He decided to document the day via Twitter using the hashtag #Classwatch2017. The tweets soon went … [Read more...]

Generally, when there is a mass bunking during college lectures, professors take strict action by assigning double homework or deducting grades. However, a professor did something different when his class didn’t show up at his class. He tweeted. Adam Heath Avitable, a professor sent out some hilarious tweets that made him a Twitter star for a day. It’s okay that he didn’t get his students’ attention, because he got more than he expected on Twitter. … [Read more...]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, date unknown.CreditPhotograph from Bettmann / Getty All was quiet on the Riviera, and then the Fitzgeralds arrived, Scott and Zelda and Scotty. The summer season opened. There had been talk about their coming. They were coming; they were not. One day they appeared on the beach. They had played tennis the day before, and were badly burned. Everybody was concerned about their burns. They must keep their shoulders covered; they must rub on olive oil. Scott was too burned to go in the water, and much of the time, he sat aside from the rush of things, a reflective, staid paterfamilias. That the Fitzgeralds are the best looking couple in modern literary society doesn’t do them justice, knowing what we do about beauty and brains. That they might be the handsomest pair at any collegiate houseparty, inspiring alumni to warnings about the pitfalls ahead of the young, is more to the point, although Scott really looks more as the undergraduate would like to look, than … [Read more...]

Isadora Duncan Credit Illustration by Hugo Gellert Like a ghost from the grave Isadora Duncan is dancing again at Nice. A decade ago her art, animated by her extraordinary public personality, came as close to founding an esthetic renaissance as American morality would allow, and the provinces especially had a narrow escape. Today her body, whose Attic splendor once brought Greece to Kansas and Kalamazoo, is approaching its half-century mark. Her spirit is still green as a bay tree, but her flesh is worn, perhaps by the weight of laurels. She is the last of the trilogy of great female personalities our century produced. Two of them, Duse and Bernhardt, have gone to their elaborate national tombs. Only Isadora Duncan, the youngest, the American, remains wandering the European earth. No one has taken Isadoraâs place in her own country and she is not missed. Of that fervor for the classic dance which she was the first to bring to a land bred on âTurkey in the Straw,â beneficial signs … [Read more...]

Edith Wharton, 1905.CreditPhotograph courtesy Charles Wesley Hearn / Beinecke Library, Yale The aristocratic Mrs. Edith Wharton was born Jones in a fashionable quarter of New York, arriving appropriately during the quarrel between masters about servants, known as the Civil War. The parents of the novelist were without talent, being mere people of the world. From them into her veins ran Rhinelanders, Stevens, early Howes, and Schermerhorns intact. Her corpuscles were Holland burghers, Colonial colonels, and provincial gentry who with the passage of time had become Avenue patricians—patrons of Protestant church and Catholic grand opera as the two highest forms of public worship, a strict clan making intercellular marriages, attending winter balls, dominating certain smart spots on the eastern seaboard, and unaware of any signs of life further west. In blood they were old, Dutch and British, the only form of being American that they knew. As a child among them, little Miss Jones … [Read more...]

Solo Attempt Newfoundland to Paris Start Last Night Miss Earhart (Mrs G. Palmer Putnam), a well-known American airwoman, started a solo flight across the Atlantic from Harbour Grace (Newfoundland) at 11.15 last night (B.S.T.). Her destination (says Reuter) is Paris. This is her second Atlantic air crossing. The first was made four years ago, when she accompanied Mr. Wilmer Stulz and Mr. Louis Gordon as a passenger in the seaplane Friendship, which was forced down off the coast of Carmarthenshire. She will be the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo if the present venture is successful. There was a south-westerly wind blowing when the flight began, and the weather was cloudy. The red-and-gold plane soared easily into the skies and rapidly disappeared eastwards along the same route that Miss Earhart travelled four years ago when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic. In the first stages of her present flight form New York she was accompanied by Mr. Bernt Balcheo, Rear Admiral … [Read more...]

Albert Einstein The only scientists who kept the Business-as-Usual sign hanging out during the war were the mathematicians and astronomers. The other men of learning were engaged in war work. Physicists were making better range-finders, chemists were making better poison gases, and theologians were proving that their gods were in the trenches qualifying for meritorious-conduct medals and kisses on both cheeks. But the astronomers and mathematicians were not doing their bits. While the war was in progress, Albert Einstein was completing his theory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and British astronomers were working on plans to test it. It was fraternizing with the enemy. Scientists of this type have always been dangerous internationalists. They did incalculable harm to Church and State at an earlier time by casting suspicion on the Bible truth that the earth was flat and had four corners, and even today a man who meddles with the universe is regarded as unsafe. One of the … [Read more...]

Credit Illustration by Dadu Shin Sad-eyed last month was nimble, middle-sized Life-President Clair Maxwell as he told newshawks of the sale of the fifty-three-year-old gagmag to Time. For celebrated name alone, price: $85,000. Said he: “Life . . . introduced to the world the drawings . . . of such men as Charles Dana Gibson, the verses of . . . James Whitcomb Riley and Oliver Herford, such writers as John Kendrick Bangs. . . . Beginning next month the magazine Life will embark on a new venture entirely unrelated to the old.” How unrelated to the world of the Gibson Girl is this new venture might have been gathered at the time from a prospectus issued by enormous, Apollo-faced C. D. Jackson, of Time, Inc. “Life,” wrote he, “will show us the Man-of-the-Week . . . his body clothed and, if possible, nude.” It will expose “the loves, scandals, and personal affairs of the plain and fancy citizen . . . and write around them a light, good-tempered … [Read more...]

Each war and revolution produces its lost generation. Israel's lost generation are the middle-aged, those who came here at a time of their life which still allows them to remember Europe. Not the fleshpots of Europe; for most of them lived in penury. Not the safety of Europe; for they were persecuted. They do not plan or even yearn to go back, for their bridges have been burnt - either by their own free will or by the torches of their persecutors. They know that for them, as for the whole nation, there is no turning back.
Nevertheless they are a lost generation. They finger lovingly their Israeli passports, but they cannot get accustomed to the climate. They are proud of living in Israel's capital, but its provincial atmosphere oppresses them. They hebraise their names, but Hebrew remains an acquired language to them. The children in school take to the Biblical language like ducks to the pond, but the parents speak it haltingly and read it with even greater difficulty; they feel left … [Read more...]

Each war and revolution produces its lost generation. Israel's lost generation are the middle-aged, those who came here at a time of their life which still allows them to remember Europe. Not the fleshpots of Europe; for most of them lived in penury. Not the safety of Europe; for they were persecuted. They do not plan or even yearn to go back, for their bridges have been burnt - either by their own free will or by the torches of their persecutors. They know that for them, as for the whole nation, there is no turning back.
Nevertheless they are a lost generation. They finger lovingly their Israeli passports, but they cannot get accustomed to the climate. They are proud of living in Israel's capital, but its provincial atmosphere oppresses them. They hebraise their names, but Hebrew remains an acquired language to them. The children in school take to the Biblical language like ducks to the pond, but the parents speak it haltingly and read it with even greater difficulty; they feel left … [Read more...]

CreditIllustration by Roman Muradov I have but now returned to England, and to my tranquil pen, after spending six interesting, rather, but scarcely restful weeks in America. It had been my purpose in setting out, or perhaps I should say my thought, to look at, but not exactly to examine, in the journalistic sense of the word, what is going on in the field, or fields—they are quite separate—of book and magazine publishing over there. I bore, in my portfolio, letters, pressed upon me by various friends, to Mr. Horace-Lorimer, of the Saturday Review Post, a Mr. Bok, whom my distinguished compatriot, Lord Tweedley, had visited in Tamiami, long years since, and who turned out unhappily to be deceased; and to the strenuous Mr. William Rose, who in addition to writing for New Yorker, conducts a column of chat about the underworld in the New York Herald, known for some amusing American reason as “the Trib.” Mr. Rose was not in when I called at New Yorker, a weekly … [Read more...]

CreditWalter Breveglieri/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty This is my last and best and true and only meal, thought Mr. Pirnie as he descended at noon and swung east on the beat-up sidewalk of Forty-fifth Street. Just ahead of him was the girl from the reception desk. I am a little fleshed up around the crook of the elbow, thought Pirnie, but I commute good. He quickened his step to overtake her and felt the pain again. What a stinking trade it is, he thought. But after what I’ve done to other assistant treasurers, I can’t hate anybody. Sixteen deads, and I don’t know how many possibles. The girl was near enough now so he could smell her fresh receptiveness, and the lint in her hair. Her skin was light blue, like the sides of horses. “I love you,” he said, “and we are going to lunch together for the first and only time, and I love you very much.” “Hello, Mr. Pirnie,” she said, overtaken. “Let’s not think of anything.” … [Read more...]

Cabinet of Independents Nahas Pasha Goes: "Failed to maintain order" 17 British dead in Cairo riots King Farouk last night dismissed Nahas Pasha and his Government as a direct consequence of Saturday's anti-British riots in Cairo. The new Prime Minister, Aly Maher Pasha, announced his Cabinet almost at once. All, like himself, are Independents. King Farouk acted although Nahas Pasha had taken strong measures to restore order. Martial law is in force in Cairo and there is a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Assemblies are forbidden and the troops have orders to shoot offenders. Three hundred arrests of "subversive elements" have been made. Seventeen British are feared to have been killed in the riots and much European property was destroyed. The British Ambassador warned the Egyptian Government yesterday that they will be held responsible. In London Mr Eden discussed the news from Egypt with the United States Ambassador; he also saw the Chiefs of Staff. The liner Queen Mary, with Mr Churchill on … [Read more...]

CreditIllustration by Roman Muradov Mr. Arbuthnot—They have not kept nor do they intend to keep . . . They have undermined the foundations . . . They constitute a threat to our democratic institutions . . . And I say to you, my fellow-Americans. . . Q—Mr. Arbuthnot, I can tell what you’re up to. A—Oh, hello. Well, what am I up to? Q— You’re being a campaign orator again. A—That’s right. Every four years. Q—Any new clichés for 1952? A—Indeed, yes. A veritable mine of high-sounding phrases, in addition to the tried-and-true platitudes of yesteryear. Q—You mean there is such a thing as a new cliché? A—They come off the assembly line fast these days. Politics, with the help of radio and television, can take a fine, fresh phrase and make a cliché of it in a month, just as the juke boxes can take a catchy tune and make a cliché of it in the same time. Q—Who are your sources this year? … [Read more...]

Virginia Woolf, circa 1920.CreditPhotograph from Mondadori Portfolio / Getty It is, probably, already too late to hope that someone will write a definitive history of Bloomsbury, that fascinating cultural milieu which formed itself around 1910, exercised its greatest influence during the twenties, and came to an end with the death of Virginia Woolf. There is an excellent account of the intellectual influences from which it was born in a posthumous essay by Maynard Keynes; for its later history we shall have to rely upon the memoirs of David Garnett, which are now appearing in England, and the journals of Virginia Woolf, of which “A Writer’s Diary” (Harcourt, Brace) is, we hope, only the first installment. Bloomsbury was not a “school” in any literary sense—there is no common Bloomsbury style or subject—nor was it centered on any one salon, like the Holland House set of the nineteenth century, or the Garsington set, to which many of its members … [Read more...]

James Dean, 24, one of Hollywood’s brightest new motion-picture stars, was killed early last night in a head-on collision at the rural town of Cholame, about 19 miles east of Paso Robles, the California Highway Patrol reported. The young actor met death in his German-built Porsche sports car while en route to road races at Salinas. Patrolmen said Dean was dead on arrival at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital following the crash at the intersection of State Highway 41 and U.S. 466. Mechanic Injured His mechanic, identified by the CHP as Rolph Wuetherich, about 27, of Hollywood, suffered a fractured jaw, fractured hip and body lacerations. He was described as in “moderately serious condition.” The CHP office at San Luis Obispo said a car driven by Donald Turnupseed of Tulare made a left turn on Highway 41 while traveling east, colliding almost head on with Dean’s tiny sports car. Investigators said Turnupseed suffered minor injuries. An attending physician … [Read more...]

Light heavyweight champion Archie Moore lands a hard left during the fifth round of his bout against heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano at Yankee Stadium.CreditPhotograph by Bettman / Getty Back in 1922, the late Heywood Broun, who is not remembered primarily as a boxing writer, wrote a durable account of a combat between the late Benny Leonard and the late Rocky Kansas for the lightweight championship of the world. Leonard was the greatest practitioner of the era, Kansas just a rough, optimistic fellow. In the early rounds, Kansas messed Leonard about, and Broun was profoundly disturbed. A radical in politics, he was a conservative in the arts, and Kansas made him think of Gertrude Stein, les Six, and nonrepresentational painting, all of them novelties that irritated him. “With the opening gong Rocky Kansas tore into Leonard,” he wrote. “He was gauche and inaccurate, but terribly persistent.” The classic verities prevailed, however. After a few rounds, during … [Read more...]

Marlon Brando Most Japanese girls giggle. The little maid on the fourth floor of the Miyako Hotel, in Kyoto, was no exception. Hilarity, and attempts to suppress it, pinked her cheeks (unlike the Chinese, the Japanese complexion more often than not has considerable color), shook her plump peony-and-pansy-kimonoed figure. There seemed to be no particular reason for this merriment; the Japanese giggle operates without apparent motivation. I’d merely asked to be directed toward a certain room. “You come see Marron?” she gasped, showing, like so many of her fellow-countrymen, an array of gold teeth. Then, with the tiny, pigeon-toed skating steps that the wearing of a kimono necessitates, she led me through a labyrinth of corridors, promising, “I knock you Marron.” The “l” sound does not exist in Japanese, and by “Marron” the maid meant Marlon—Marlon Brando, the American actor, who was at that time in Kyoto doing location work for … [Read more...]

President Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, who threatened two days ago to take the field and bolster the morale of his men; changed his mind last night and abdicated.
He stayed in Havana long enough to proclaim a great Government victory in the Battle of Santa Clara and then hopped a place for the Dominican Republic leaving behind a junta which the rebels refuse to recognise. He took with him his chief military aides and put his eldest son and 53 other military leaders on a plane to Jacksonville, Florida. Ten on Batista's personal secret service officers arrived today in Miami, and yet another flight carrying most of the Batista Cabinet and their families landed in New Orleans. Batista's two youngest sons had flown to Idlewild earlier on what was called a "sightseeing tour". The luckless caretaker of the Batista regime is Supreme Court Judge Carlos Piedra. Today he ordered the Government forces to lay down their arms and return to Havana form the triumphant battlefield. A broadcast from … [Read more...]

Henry James, circa 1900.CreditPhotograph from Corbis / Getty One night nearly thirty years ago, in a legendary New York boîte de nuit et des arts called Tony’s, I was taking part in a running literary gun fight that had begun with a derogatory or complimentary remark somebody made about something, when one of the participants, former Pinkerton man Dashiell Hammett, whose “The Maltese Falcon” had come out a couple of years before, suddenly startled us all by announcing that his writing had been influenced by Henry James’s novel “The Wings of the Dove.” Nothing surprises me any more, but I couldn’t have been more surprised then if Humphrey Bogart, another frequenter of that old salon of wassail and debate, had proclaimed that his acting bore the deep impress of the histrionic art of Maude Adams. I was unable, in a recent reinvestigation, to find many feathers of “The Dove” in the claws of “The Falcon,” but there are … [Read more...]